I still get super sad when I think of our author friend's untimely demise. I recently read a bunch of articles, one of which was: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_maxThat's not the newest thing ever so maybe it's been posted here already. It was a really penetrating look into David as a person, teacher, husband, son. I'm so thankful they treated his depression like the serious illness it was.I have begun collecting some DFW memorabilia. I wish I had gone to take a class with him at ISU when I had the chance.

Hey all, it's your absentee landlord jervo here, just here to apologize for all the spam that's coming through. I don't really use LJ all that much anymore, but I find I keep having to come back here every day to delete some sort of horrible crap.

As I haven't actively participated in the community (or on LJ itself) in years, and as the community is somewhat dead, and as the vast majority of posts that appear are these spam entries, I'm debating whether to close up shop entirely, or just hand the reins over to someone else that may want to maintain this place. Since I'm sure we're all looking forward to the release of The Pale King later this year, it would certainly be nice to have a friendly, lively place for discussion that isn't cluttered with boobs and ads. If that place is still this place, then great - if that place is somewhere else, so be it.

So, there it is. Please leave a comment and let me know what you guys want to do.

does the text of the dfw kenyon graduation address exist anywhere for free now? i don't really want to buy the weird one sentence per page gift book listed on amazon. i mean i probably will buy it for completion's sake, but i'd like to read it first.

Not to ghoulishly drop into this community and drop some bad poetry out of nowhere, but I thought it would be for the best to post here, it's a more appropriate fit in Livejournal than the Wallace list-serv, which I've been (mostly lurking) a member for nearly eight years now. (Not sending it out is not an option for me right now, writing, scratch that, writing for an AUDIENCE, is the only thing helping me out) Also, as a note, and this may have been mentioned earlier, so I apologize for any repition, iif you aren't on the wallace-l@waste.org, I recommend joining for at least a bit, it has been sort of a small, good thing (as Carver would have it) to help us through this rough patch. We have been each others grief counselers.

In any case. Two Davids

There are so many people in the worldWho will never, ever, meet David JaccoChances are that you are one of them

And there are so many wordsWhich have been left unwritten by David Wallace,And we all know that they will never be written.

Year of Suckmy eyes are just not drying out today.the eschaton has early come. kaboom.at any rate, it seems impending doomwith subtle tones of almond and dismay.just like that time before, when spalding graywalked steadily to his ophelian tomb:how many stories squandered, and for whomwere those belles lettres untold, we cannot say.and so but how can dave be criticized?no matter the despair, the angry fistswe want to shake at him, he realizedthat all we do is utterly for naught.in empathy, i go to shave my wristsin broad strokes, south to north, as i was taught.

More indepth obituary from the New York Times, detailing Dave's long, and horrifically painful summer. I can only hope that he's now found that escape he was looking for. It just sounds like his last few weeks were wretched for him.

A particularly painful quote from his father stands out to me the most: James Wallace said that last year his son had begun suffering side effects from the drugs and, at a doctor’s suggestion, had gone off the medication in June 2007. The depression returned, however, and no other treatment was successful. The elder Wallaces had seen their son in August, he said.

“He was being very heavily medicated,” he said. “He’d been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy. Everything had been tried, and he just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

It's strange that he went off of the medication in June 2007 as I began classes with him in August through Decemeber and apart from a nasty bout of pnemonia that I know he was hospitalized for a week or so, nothing seemed noticeably off about him. But I suppose it's naive and trite for me to think I would have seen something in him in the 6 hours I saw him a week, as private a man as he was.

However, I was supposed to house-sit/dog-sit for him this summer while he and Karen traveled as they usually do, but he contacted me in early June to say their travel plans fell through. I hate to think that now it was because he was having so much inner turmoil that he wasn't able to travel, and yet from the sounds of it, that appears to be exactly the case.

And so as not end this post with anything TOO sad, though with news like this, sad sort of becomes relative, here is a wonderfully written tribute from The Huffington Post, from another Pomona professor, who knew him.

It's a nice insight into what he was like a man, when he was truly as his best, and not just as a writer.